Midnight Marked

“You sure about that?” I asked.

Tanya offered a tall, cylindrical paper bag that smelled like yeast and sugar. “Korovai,” she said. “It’s a traditional Ukrainian wedding bread. She’s happy you’re engaged, but she’s irritated about something to do with ballet.”

“Berna enjoys her opinions,” Gabriel said with a grin. “It’s like a hobby for her.”

“Well, it smells amazing,” Ethan said, accepting the bread. “Please thank her for us. And please, help yourself to some champagne.”

“Can’t say no to that,” Gabriel said with a grin, and escorted Tanya toward the snack table.

And as I glanced around, I realized my grandfather had stepped away, had his ear to his phone. Ethan, catching the direction of my gaze, looked, too. And soon enough, everyone was watching him, expressions tense.

When my grandfather put the phone away, he glanced at us. “At the risk of ruining the party—” he began, but Ethan shook his head.

“Please, go ahead. Say what needs to be said.”

“A judge offered bail to Sorcha and Adrien Reed.”

There were curses and disgusted looks throughout the group. Fistfuls of angry magic replaced the confetti that had sparkled through the air.

“You are freaking kidding me,” Mallory said.

“Unfortunately not,” my grandfather said. “Nick has pointed out the particular judge was mentioned in Reed’s papers. He was a supporter. But that lack of ethics isn’t the biggest news. The Reeds were driven home a few hours ago with monitoring devices. They were tampered with, which sent an alert to the CPD.”

We shifted nervously, waiting for the rest of it.

“Adrien Reed is dead. Killed, it appears, by his own hand. Sorcha Reed is gone. Their accounts have been cleaned out.”

Ethan closed his eyes ruefully.

“She killed him,” I said, and all eyes turned to me. “Her plan—her long-term plan to get free—to become queen, failed. Killing him, taking the money, running. She’d have considered that a consolation prize.” It didn’t fit with the Sorcha I’d seen on Reed’s arm, but it fit with the one I’d seen at Towerline.

“We’ll see what the evidence says,” my grandfather said. But there was a flatness to his voice that indicated he didn’t disagree.

“What if she comes back?” Mallory asked.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Catcher interjected, putting an arm around her. “Just as we’ve dealt with everything else.”

“And we’ll help,” Ethan said, and looked around the crowd, got nods from his vampires, from the shifters.

“All for one and one for all?” Catcher asked.

“All for Chicago,” Ethan amended. “Because that’s what this is really about. Not vampire, not shifter, not sorcerer, not human. A man and a woman who believed they were entitled to more than they’d earned and were willing to use people to get it.” His eyes sparked like fire. “She tries something here again, and she’ll see how hard Chicagoans will fight.”

And until then, I thought, as he took my hand and squeezed, we had each other. And we’d try to make the best of it.

Read on for a look at the first book in Chloe Neill’s new Devil’s Isle series,

THE VEIL

Available now wherever books and e-books are sold

The French Quarter was thinking about war again.

Booms echoed across the neighborhood, vibrating windows and shaking the shelves at Royal Mercantile—the finest purveyor of dehydrated meals in New Orleans.

And antique walking sticks. We were flush with antique walking sticks.

I sat at the store’s front counter, working on a brass owl that topped one of them. The owl’s head was supposed to turn when you pushed a button on the handle, but the mechanism was broken. I’d taken apart the tiny brass pieces and found the problem—one of the small toothy gears had become misaligned. I just needed to slip it back into place.

I adjusted the magnifying glass over the owl, its jointed brass wings spread to reveal its inner mechanisms. I had a thin screwdriver in one hand, a pair of watchmaking tweezers in the other. To get the gear in place, I had to push one spring down and another up in that very small space.

I liked tinkering with the store’s antiques, to puzzle through broken parts and sticky locks. It was satisfying to make something work that hadn’t before. And since the demand for fancy French sideboards and secretaries wasn’t exactly high these days, there was plenty of inventory to pick from.

I nibbled on my bottom lip as I moved the pieces, carefully adjusting the tension so the gear could slip in. I had to get the gear into the back compartment, between the rods, and into place between the springs. Just a smidge to the right, and . . .

Boom.

I jumped, the sound of another round of fireworks shuddering me back to the store—and the gear that now floated in the air beside me, bobbing a foot off the counter’s surface.

“Damn,” I muttered, heart tripping.

I’d moved it with my mind, with the telekinetic magic I wasn’t supposed to have. At least, not unless I wanted a lifetime prison sentence.

I let go of the magic, and the gear dropped, hit the counter, bounced onto the floor.

My heart now pounding in my chest, the fingers on both hands crossed superstitiously, I hopped off the stool and hurried to the front door to check the box mounted on the building across the street. It was a monitor with a camera on top, triggered when the amount of magic in the air rose above background levels—like when a Sensitive accidentally moved a gear.

I’d gotten lucky; the light was still red. I must not have done enough to trigger it, at least from this distance. I was still in the clear—for now. But damn, that had been close. I hadn’t even known I’d been using magic.

Boom.

Already pumped with nervous energy, I jumped again.

“Good lord,” I said, pushing the door open and stepping outside onto the threshold between the store’s bay windows, where MERCANTILE was mosaicked in tidy blue capitals.

It was mid-October, and the heat and humidity still formed a miserable blanket across the French Quarter. Royal Street was nearly empty of people.

The war had knocked down half the buildings in the Quarter, which gave me a clear view of the back part of the neighborhood and the Mississippi River, which bordered it. Figures moved along the riverbank, testing fireworks for the finale of the festivities. The air smelled like sparks and flame, and wisps of white smoke drifted across the twilight sky.